Automated Patient Records (APRs) have recently been cited as a critical emerging technology in independent reports from the Institute of Medicine and the General Accounting Office. In the wake of recent research successes, the first generation of commercial APR systems has emerged.However, both research and commercial APR developments so far have been technology- driven, focusing primarily on specific hardware or database technologies, without sufficient emphasis on user-requirements or interface research. As a result, existing systems have met resistance from the user community, particularly on issues of user interface and usability.The proposed research addresses these problems, bringing together a team of leading human-computer interface researchers and APR experts to perform a user-oriented design for a novel APR interface. This analysis will apply methods of organizational and cognitive analysis developed by the principal investigator in prior research. The full APR interface, which includes multiple views of the APR data, based on different modes and contexts of access, is implemented in Phase II, using open systems technology such as X-Windows/MOTIF software, to render it portable and able to be integrated into a wide range of present and future APR systems.
